The biblatex package Programmable bibliographies and citations Philipp Lehman Version 0.8e [email protected] July 4, 2009 Contents 1 Introduction . 1 3.6 Citation commands . 64 1.1 About .......... 1 3.7 Localization commands 72 1.2 License . 2 3.8 Formatting commands . 73 1.3 Feedback . 2 3.9 Language notes . 80 1.4 Acknowledgments . 2 3.10 Usage notes . 81 1.5 Contributions . 3 3.11 Hints and caveats . 90 1.6 Prerequisites . 3 4 Author guide . 94 2 Database guide . 6 4.1 Overview . 94 2.1 Entry types . 6 4.2 Bibliography styles . 97 2.2 Entry fields . 12 4.3 Citation styles . 105 2.3 Usage notes . 27 4.4 Data interface . 107 2.4 Hints and caveats . 32 4.5 Auxiliary commands . 114 3 User guide .......... 38 4.6 Punctuation and spacing 128 3.1 Package options . 38 4.7 Bibliography strings . 134 3.2 Global customization . 49 4.8 Localization modules . 135 3.3 Standard styles . 50 4.9 Formatting commands . 146 3.4 Sorting options . 55 4.10 Hints and caveats . 154 3.5 Bibliography commands 57 5 Revision history . 165 1 Introduction Please be advised that this package is in beta stage and released for testing. The version number will be stepped up to 1.0 as soon as it is considered suit- able for general distribution. TeX distributors are advised to wait for version 1.0. This document is a systematic reference manual for the biblatex package. Look at the sample documents which ship with this package to get a first impression.1 For a quick start guide, browse sections 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 3.3, 3.5, 3.6, 3.10. 1.1 About This package provides advanced bibliographic facilities for use with LaTeX in con- junction with BibTeX. The package is a complete reimplementation of the biblio- graphic facilities provided by LaTeX. It redesigns the way in which LaTeX interacts with BibTeX at a fairly fundamental level. With biblatex, BibTeX is only used to sort the bibliography and to generate labels. Instead of being implemented in bst files, the formatting of the bibliography is entirely controlled by LaTeX macros, hence the name biblatex. Good working knowledge in LaTeX should be suƿcient 1 http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/exptl/biblatex/doc/examples/ 1 to design new bibliography and citation styles. There is no need to learn BibTeX’s postfix stack language. This package also supports subdivided bibliographies, mul- tiple bibliographies within one document, and separate lists of bibliographic short- hands. Bibliographies may be subdivided into parts and/or segmented by topics. Just like the bibliography styles, all citation commands may be freely defined. The package is completely localized and can interface with the babel package. Please refer to table 1 on page 23 for a list of languages currently supported by this pack- age. 1.2 License Copyright © 2006–2009 Philipp Lehman. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this software under the terms of the LaTeX Project Public License, version 1.3.1 This package is author-maintained. 1.3 Feedback Please use the biblatex project page on SourceForge to report bugs and submit feature requests.2 There are two trackers on this page: Bugs for bug reports and Features for feature requests.3 Select a tracker, then click on ‘Add new’ to submit your report or request. I may consider implementing a new feature if the request is reasonable, seems to be relevant to a considerable number of users, and complies with the architecture and philosophy of biblatex. Before making a feature request, please ensure that you have thoroughly studied this manual. If you do not want to report a bug or request a feature but are simply in need of assistance, you might want to consider posting your question on the comp.text.tex newsgroup. I can not provide end-user support by email or via the project page. 1.4 Acknowledgments A package like biblatex naturally draws upon previous solutions in some way or other. There are a few packages and other resources which have been particular in- spiring or helpful. The amsrefs package by Michael Downes uses TeX rather than BibTeX to format the bibliography. This has originally inspired the idea of using a structured data interface with BibTeX. Code snippets drawn from the custom-bib package by Patrick W. Daly have been helpful while learning BibTeX’s rather spe- cial stack language. The IEEEtran.bst file by Michael Shell introduces a special control entry type to pass control parameters to BibTeX at run-time. This package enhances this inventive idea such that all parameters are conveniently settable via package options. While this package has been written entirely from scratch, I have studied the features of popular packages such as cite, natbib, and jurabib, as well as related ones like chapterbib, bibtopic, and bibunits, to get an idea of what kind of features users might expect from a full-featured bibliographic pack- age. Some of biblatex’s features were heavily inspired by these packages or are explicitly modelled after previous solutions. 1 http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/base/lppl.txt 2 http://sourceforge.net/projects/biblatex/ 3 http://sourceforge.net/tracker2/?group_id=244752 2 1.5 Contributions The language modules of this package include contributions by (in the order of submission): Ignacio Fernández Galván (Spanish/Spain), Enrico Gregorio (Ital- ian), Johannes Wilm (Danish and Norwegian), Per Starbäck, Carl-Gustav Werner, Filip Åsblom (Swedish), Augusto Ritter Stoǀel (Portuguese/Brazil). 1.6 Prerequisites This section gives an overview of all resources required by this package and dis- cusses compatibility issues. 1.6.1 Requirements The resources listed in this section are strictly required for biblatex to function. The package will not work if they are not available. e-TeX The biblatex package requires e-TeX. TeX distributions have been shipping e-TeX binaries for quite some time, the popular distributions use them by default these days. The biblatex package checks if it is running under e-TeX. Simply try com- piling your documents as you usually do, the chances are that it just works. If you get an error message, try compiling the document with elatex instead of latex or pdfelatex instead of pdflatex, respectively. BibTeX By default, the biblatex package uses BibTeX as a database backend. While a legacy BibTeX binary is suƿcient to run biblatex, using bibtex8 is recommended. If your TeX distribution does not ship with bibtex8, you can get it from ýĎûĈ.1 Biber Biber is the next-generation backend of biblatex. It is currently under develop- ment but may already be used instead of BibTeX. You only need one backend, either BibTeX or Biber. Biber is available from SourceForge.2 etoolbox This LaTeX package, which is loaded automatically, provides generic programming facilities required by biblatex. It is readily available from ýĎûĈ.3 Apart from the above resources, biblatex also requires the standard LaTeX pack- ages keyval and ifthen as well as the url package. These package are included in all common TeX distributions and will be loaded automatically. If the bibencoding package option is enabled, the inputenc package is required in addition to that. Note that inputenc is not loaded automatically. 1.6.2 Recommended packages The packages listed in this section are not required for biblatex to function, but they provide recommended additional functions or enhance existing features. The package loading order does not matter. babel The babel package provides the core architecture for multilingual typesetting. If you are writing in a language other than American English, using this package is 1 http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/biblio/bibtex/8-bit/ 2 http://biblatex-biber.sourceforge.net/ 3 http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/etoolbox/ 3 strongly recommended. If loaded, biblatex package will detect babel automati- cally. csquotes If this package is available, biblatex will use its language-sensitive quotation fa- cilities to enclose certain titles in quotation marks. If not, biblatex uses quotes suitable for American English as a fallback. When writing in any other language, loading csquotes is strongly recommended.1 1.6.3 Compatible classes and packages The biblatex package provides dedicated compatibility code for the classes and packages listed in this section. hyperref The hyperref package transforms citations into hyperlinks. See the hyperref and backref package options in section 3.1.2 for further details. When using the hyperref package, it is preferable to load it after biblatex. showkeys The showkeys package prints the internal keys of, among other things, citations in the text and items in the bibliography. The package loading order does not matter. memoir When using the memoir class, the default bibliography headings are adapted such that they blend well with the default layout of this class. See section 3.11.2 for further usage hints. KOMA-Script When using any of the scrartcl, scrbook, or scrreprt classes, the default biblio- graphy headings are adapted such that they blend with the default layout of these classes. See section 3.11.1 for further usage hints. 1.6.4 Incompatible packages The packages listed in this section are not compatible with biblatex. Since it reimplements the bibliographic facilities of LaTeX from the ground up, biblatex naturally conflicts with all packages modifying the same facilities. This is not spe- cific to biblatex. Some of the packages listed below are also incompatible with each other for the same reason. babelbib The babelbib package provides support for multilingual bibliographies. This is a standard feature of biblatex. Use the hyphenation field and the package option babel for similar functionality.